Hawaii State Government bans Netflix,Inc. for its Employees

The Hawai State government blocked Netflix, Inc. and Hulu as the employees were wasting all their time on streaming shows and videos online during their office hours.

The State Government of Hawai has blocked online video streaming website Netflix, Inc. and Hulu for its employees. These two video streaming services are highly popular among the Hawai State Employees.

According to a report by brietbart.org and Hawai news, government employees waste as much as 100-300 hours on Netflix, during working hours from July 28, 2015 to August 4, 2015, as quoted by Office of Information Management and Technology. The estimated 100-300 hours is equivalent to a full time employee who spends all his time watching “Orange is the New Black” or “House of Cards.” Now the employees are not allowed to watch those shows during working hours on their official computers.

Netflix and Hulu are the only two video streaming services that have been blocked while YouTube and Adobe Media Player are still permitted to be used by the employees from their official computers for as long as they are being used for office, training or research purpose. As stated by WFSB, Todd Nacapuy, the CIO has issued a memo to the government officials saying that they will be blocking online streaming services for the employees as they want to preserve sufficient online access for the state business. Since this was a waste of the tax payer’s money, IT consultant Burt Lnn says that putting a ban on these services will prove to be very beneficial in the future as now no one will misinterpret the work being done by the state workers.

Communication Director at Hawaii Information Service Ryan Ozama, stated that anyone who is running a business would make the same analysis as to how much is being paid for the internet, how much of it is being used on the business itself and how much is wasted on non-business related activities. Netflix, Inc. has not announced any punishment for the employees who have wasted their time streaming shows on Netflix, Inc. and wasted the tax payer’s money on it. They want their employees to stay focused on their jobs as well.

The State’s problem was not only that the employees were watching entertainment related services but also that it was taking up bandwidth. Hawaiian Islands internet service is not like U.S. mainland service, they have nine active submarine cables through which the island is connected to the rest of the world and 25 Mbps is the limit of broadband speed that they have. So they have to be careful as to where they are wasting their bandwidth. The positive point being that the employees are not being penalized for doing so and still have access to YouTube and Flash Player.